Mark Zuckerberg may be rich, but The Social Network shows the Facebook boss as
having no social skills, says Melissa Whitworth.

The reviews of The Social Network, which tells the story of the founding of Facebook, have been adulatory. One critic called it the movie of the year; another compared the tale of Mark Zuckerberg's rise to become the youngest ever self-made billionaire to F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby.

Sadly, Zuckerberg's own personality doesn't come out of the process all that well. A popular saying among successful businessmen, edited only slightly from Psalms 25:8, is "the geeks shall inherit the earth". Sure enough, The New York Times noticed "the conspicuous paradox that… the world's most popular social networking website was created by a man with excruciatingly, almost pathologically, poor people skills."

In the film, the fictional Zuckerberg steals the idea for Facebook from fellow students, misleads and betrays his business partners, has no real friends and can't relate to women. And considering he can afford the best PR team on the planet, the real Zuckerberg's reaction has been tragically ham-fisted. For a start, he went on Oprah, allowing her producers to film inside his pathetically modest suburban home, complete with a Joe-Shmoe family car in the driveway and pretty girlfriend, whom he is filmed kissing in the driveway. He then gave $100 million to the school system in New Jersey.

Going on Oprah, the traditional venue for celebrity confessionals and sofa-jumping, doesn't exactly say "I am at the forefront of the brave new digital era". It says: "I don't have a clue how to deal with this film, so let's start by charming Middle American housewives." And, as one flabbergasted New York PR said: "Whenever a celebrity's character is questioned, an act of goodwill is undertaken and publicised. But giving all that money to Newark? In New Jersey?"

According to the film, however, we have all benefited from Zuckerberg's lack of social skills. Facebook, it argues, was born because Zuckerberg was dumped. In a line I expect women across the city to start using immediately, his ex tells him: "Don't think girls won't like you because you are a nerd. They won't like you because you are an a------."

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• Facebook might have been started to get back at an ex-girlfriend, but Karen Owens, a student at Duke University, is exacting revenge in a different way. The latest email doing the rounds here is her "senior honours thesis", a 42-page Powerpoint presentation entitled "An education beyond the classroom: excelling in the realm of horizontal academics".

Duke, an elite university, is famous for its level of athletic achievement – and for its sex scandals. Sure enough, Owens's presentation includes the name and photograph of every college athlete of whom she had carnal knowledge, a précis of how the interaction went, and detailed rankings of their performance. You have to admire the consistency and quality of the research – although the privacy implications would give even Mark Zuckerberg pause for thought.

• The New York social season started in earnest last week, with the opening night of Das Rheingold at the Metropolitan Opera. But even the hallowed Met is not immune from computer glitches. The production of Wagner's Ring cycle – rumoured to be costing $16 million – involves a 45-ton set, acrobats suspended from cables, a fiery bridge to Valhalla, and 65 steel girders beneath the stage.

Sadly, in the finale, Loge, the god of fire, was left alone on the stage, as acrobats and fellow singers hid in the wings: the bridge to Valhalla had malfunctioned. A friend of mine was there, but missed the whole debacle. A committed insomniac, he says that going to the opera is the only chance he gets to sleep.